studiobeerhorst is making connections

Good By Car, Hello Wonder Wagon

photo by Anthony Carpenter

The Wonder Wagon is now three years old. We built it for the first year ArtPrize was introduced to Grand Rapids. It was a big project and the fruitful labor of many talented individuals most notably Cameron Van Dyke who served as a combination master carpenter and engineer. The initial idea was to create a sort of mobile art gallery that would allow the Beerhorst Family to take our art out of our home and into the city where people gather. This is just what we have continued to do over the past three years and the Wonder Wagon has continued to serve this role very well.

There is another aspect that the Wonder Wagon speaks to and that is the notion that people need to figure out another way to get around instead of cars. The cars we love so much in this country are destroying our planet because of all the raw materials they required to build them and because of all the toxic emissions into the atmosphere they release. To make matters worse both India and China are quickly moving in our direction in our dependence on the automobile and that makes matters much worse very quickly. We need to think beyond cars and discover new ways to get around and new ways to design not only our cities but our lifestyles. Every time we pull the Wonder Wagon to an event we are poetically saying just that. What could you do to drive less? What kind of life could you design that would not require getting in a car every day?